Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The verdict is in!

It wasn't an "allergy", it was a type of food poisoning. Whee! And I get a bunch of fresh new skin in the bargain!

Nasty little toxin. I informed the restaurant from whence it came.

The adventure expands!

Meet "Turkey" and "Pig", my daughters' ducklings. Yes, the girls named them.




We've had them since they were just a few days old (and bright yellow), a gift from a local Taekwando teacher, along with an apparently-female Mallard chick my girls caught in a nearby spillway.

After a couple of weeks, and after considerable growth, she being obviously non-domesticated, we had to return the Mallard (named "Quack") to the "wild" (if you can call a beautifully manicured suburban duck-infested creek's greenway "wild"), where she was instantly adopted by another juvenile female, and after a week she is doing just fine.

But Turkey and Pig we're keeping because they're standard white domesticated ducks.

Since I don't like having to change their water twice a day - which is currently necessary - I'll be expanding their pond, and somehow 'aponics-ing it, so thanks in advance to all of you who have already written about incorporating ducks into your systems.

Yum.... turkey and bacon.....

Duck-a-ponics should be kept separate from your Aquaponics. But Duck-a-ponics is still a great way to save water while also saving time and effort keeping their water nice for them.

Might I recommend looking into using a pond plant bed and airlift pumping to run a duck-a-ponics system that might have less clogging issues and be low maintenance. (You will have to fence the pond plant bed to keep the ducks out of it and some mosquito fish living in there can take care of mosquito problems.) Ducks tend to do things to the water that makes keeping a regular water pump unclogged and functioning kind of difficult. I've struggled with cleaning the muck out of my duck sump no matter what I have done and that set up is using a regular electric water pump. An airlift pump doesn't burn up the pump due to clogging it essentially just quits working if it clogs and since there are no moving parts down in the dirty water, you only have normal air pump maintenance not nightmares of pulling a totally clogged pump up to remove feathers and find out that the impeller is damaged and has to be replaced or the whole set up was so clogged that the pump essentially was running dry behind the clog and overheated/melted deformed and the whole thing had to be replaced. Yes this has happened to me in the past.

Sage and sound advice, TCLynx, so thank you very much!

FYI, duck eggs are good. Huge yolks and great for baking. Granted, my ducks are Muscovy so a little more like South American Geese than domesticated ducks. Muscovy are also a bit more "wild" in that they have gone pretty feral around much of the southern portion of North America but they are easy to raise and breed.

FINALLY had a tilapia hatching. At a broad guess, I'd say 100 to 150 but I really can't tell.

I'll post pictures when I can find my camera.

Belated happy 4th of July, especially to my countrymen!

Congratulations on the hatching. Would you have to take the fry (or what are they called) away from the adults?

I couldn't grow tilapia without heating my system year round, but they do seem to be one of the easiest fish to multiply in captivity, right?

As a precaution, I did take the fry away from the adults. Or rather, at least most of them (all I could catch in buckets without a net being available). I was going to return with a net the next day for the remaining stragglers, but when I got back I could not find any left, so it is a very good thing I grabbed the bulk of them when I did.

My understanding is that yes - tilapia are the easiest fish to multiply in captivity. I have probably been doing a few things wrong, which is likely why I have not had a large spawning before now.

I have heard of people heating their fish tank year-round by burrying it in compost (and also running recirulating water lines throughout the compost pile while also having to repeatedly add to the compost as it degrades) but I haven't done it myself and I'm given to understand that it takes a considerably large amount of compost, even for a relatively small tank. I'd be curious if anyone around here has any experience along those lines...

Went out of town this past weekend to Little Rock, AR, and hired a neighbor's kid (the same one who dug the hole in my backyard in which I burried my IBC tote fishtank) to look after the fish and the ducks.

You can probably guess where this update is headed...

Got a call from my mother-in-law late one afternoon that the duck's "pond" (the bottom 18 inches or so of a cut IBC - and not the same one as is burried for the fish, that's across the yard) was dry, and the ducks weren't happy about it... the kid had apparently not closed the valve completely when he changed their water that morning. Since he was stuck in Summer School at that moment, I called an old friend of mine (we go back over 30 years) to run over to my house, close the valve, and refill the water.

Problem solved.

The next morning I get a call from the kid asking me to walk him through making certain he closes the valve correctly, and he does - the duck pond holds water!

Many hours later, I got an urgent call from my mother-in-law late that afternoon - apparently the kid forgot to turn off the hose and it had been flooding my backyard all day. Also, he'd cranked on the faucet so tight my mominlaw couldn't budge it to get it to turn off.

I urgently called that same old buddy of mine, who drops what he's doing to drive over to my house and turn off the hose. Got a confirming text "All's well now, and yes it was on very tight."

Got home from Little Rock at 2:00 AM this morning. The ducks are fine.

However, the 275 gallon IBC tote fishtank in the ground was dry, all my big full-grown fish were dead, and the pumps were sounding very angry.

It is going to stink all day today, but when I get home from work tonight I will be cleaning out my system, and this weekend I'll be starting over with the babies/younglings that fortunately weren't in that tank.

I sure hope you didn't pay the "kid" for his mistakes!

Nope, I fired him remotely over the duck issue, before I got home to find the dead fish. His mom agreed that I should fire him, and is of a mind to do so herself.

I do NOT suspect sabotage, by the way - he's really not the type, and he apologized for the hose issue before we even knew about the fish issue.

To be clear - just in the remote chance he ever reads this in the future - this is a good kid we're talking about. But he's 16. Nowadays being a 16-year-old male, at least in the DFW area, generally means you're an immature, irresponsible jerk, no matter how nice you are. It was certainly true of me all those decades ago.

In fact, my general "I admit that I'm an 'age-ist', provided I get to pick the age" rule of thumb can be summed up as "Teenagers are crazy - especially those in the 'middle-teens'. I would feel more comfortable teaching something dangerous, like riflery or scuba diving, to a 10-year-old than I would relying on a 15-to-18 year old male to dependably remember to do simple chores."

Soo hard to find good help (heck at any age really) had to go through several "helpers" at my old house before finding someone who could be even mildly dependable. At the new farm, I still haven't found a farm sitter for during the season when my Mom flys North for the summer. And even when Mom is here, I have to try to keep things as simple and easy as possible. I have still had to talk her through dealing with some disasters over the phone.

As for the duck water. Get it re-circulating a bit somehow and you will avoid having to drain and re-fill it every day.

TCLynx, I agree with all your points, and concerning the last one - I do indeed intend to get it to circulate through growbed - probably a large one - but I haven't had time to build it yet.

I refilled the buried tote this morning, and got the pumps circulating the water back through my main growbed.

You'll notice the good news - my pumps didn't burn out!

This evening after work I'll check to see if the water has clarified, and what the various levels are (Ph, nitrites, etc.)